Professor Lisa Downing BA, MA (London) DPhil (Oxon)

Originally trained in modern European languages, literatures, and thought at the Universities of London and Oxford, I read for a DPhil from 1996-1999 under the supervision of the late Prof. Malcolm Bowie on French literature and discourses of necrophilia. (This was published as Desiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth-Century French Literature in 2003).  I have since worked at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Exeter, before taking up my Chair at the University of Birmingham in 2012.

In 2009, I was the recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize, awarded to “outstanding scholars under the age of 36 who have made a substantial contribution to their field of study and whose future contributions are held to be of correspondingly high promise”. This prize provided me with two years of funded research leave from Exeter from 2010-2012. During the two-year period of research leave, I completed a major monograph about the gendering and othering of the figure of the murderer from 1830 to the present day, The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer, which appeared in March 2013 with the University of Chicago Press, and I worked on a co-authored book with Dr Iain Morland and Dr Nikki Sullivan about the work of the late sexologist John Money. The cheekily titled Fuckology: Critical Essays on John Money’s Diagnostic Concepts was published in 2015, also with Chicago UP. My section of the book explores Money’s contribution to the controversial perversion/ paraphilia diagnosis.

Next, I wrote Selfish Women (Routledge, 2019). This book has reached an extensive readership both within and beyond the academy; an updated and expanded 2nd edition has accordingly been commissioned to appear in 2027. The book examines cultural narratives surrounding women who espouse or explore discourses of self-interest, self-regard, and selfishness. It examines whether women with politics that are contrary to the interests of the collective can teach us anything about the value of rethinking the role of the individual. My most recent book, Against Affect, the research for which was funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship, will publish in the University of Nebraska Press’s “Provocations” series on 1 April 2026. It argues against the contemporary overvaluation of emotion exemplified by the “affective turn” and in favour of a “redistribution of reason” as crucial strategies for a post-truth world. 

I currently serve as chief editor of Paragraph, the UK’s foremost journal of Modern Critical Theory.

I convene and teach on the MRes Sexuality and Gender Studies.

I welcome applications from PhD students in any of my current areas of interest, listed below: Theoretical and cultural studies approaches to crime and criminality Historical or contemporary sexuality and gender studies Interrogations of feminist, queer, Foucauldian, psychoanalytic, and ethical thought Identity politics and freedom of expression Women and power, women and the right wing, women and politics The gendering of ‘extremism’.

Find out more - our PhD French Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My research interrogates disciplinary boundaries. It explores the ethical and epistemological value of critical theory for understanding modern and contemporary culture. In all of my work I like to think against the grain and to challenge commonplaces. In particular, I write on “difficult” political, philosophical, and psychological concepts including (ab)normality, exceptionality, gendered selfishness, reason, and freedom. I have worked on contentious psychiatric and sexological diagnoses and examined tensions within and between traditions of feminism. I have also published widely on the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, some of whose methods inspire my own.

My next major research project is: "Sex-Offending in the 21st Century: Harm Prevention in an Online, Identitarian Age”.

This nascent project seeks to understand current sex-offending behaviours that are (a) potentiated by and (b) taking place in the cultural context of the digital communication age and its proliferation of online identitarian communities. Recommendations for harm-reduction are underpinned by rational analysis of behaviours that are too-often sensationalized and rendered taboo, guided by extensive team experience of devising and disseminating information and training tools for professionals and the public, and grounded in a profound understanding of the pipeline between online communities and communication methods and resultant attitudes and behaviours. Funding is currently being sought to support this project’s activities.

A related pilot project, “Understanding Incel Behaviour to Reduce Extreme Violence against Women and Girls”, was funded by the University’s Institute for Global Innovation  (PI: Dr Sophie King-Hill; CI: me) and ran from 2023-24.

My inaugural lecture at the University of Birmingham took as its subject matter some aspects of my research project on ‘selfish women’ that culminated in my 2019 monograph of that title

• Editor of Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory, the leading UK journal of Modern Critical Theory, published by Edinburgh University Press (chief editor 2024-2026).
• Member of the Editorial Board of INSEP: Journal of the International Network of Sexual Ethics and Politics, published by Budrich.
• Member of the Editorial Board of Screen Bodies, published by Berghahn.
• Former Member of the Advisory Board of Psychology and Sexuality, published by Taylor & Francis (as a non-psychologist offering a theoretical arts and humanities perspective on sexuality studies, from 2010-2015).